External HDD

As we previously mentioned, 4.50 allows to download and store PS4 games and apps to an external HDD. Insert your USB 3.0 HDD into your console, and select it from ‘USB Storage Devices’ from ‘Devices’ in Settings to format it so it’s ready to use (note, any previously stored content will be wiped from the HDD).

The HDD will now be the default download location as long as it’s plugged in; you can select the PS4’s internal storage instead on the ‘Storage’ section in Settings. You can easily move your internally-stored games and apps across to the HDD by selecting ‘Applications’ in ‘Storage’, press the ‘Options’ button and select ‘Move to Extended Storage’. You’ll be able to choose which games and apps you want to move.

To safely remove the HDD, hold down the PS button on your controller and select ‘Sound/Devices’ and then ‘Stop Using Extended Storage’ from the Quick Menu.

There is no guarantee that all USB storage devices are compatible with your system.

PS VR Improvements

If you’re playing a game in PS VR, and you return to PS4’s home screen, you may notice that the resolution looks lower than normal on the TV ‘Social Screen’. Following this update, you’ll find that the resolution of the system screen displayed on your TV is significantly better when you’re out of VR mode.

Also, the resolution of Cinematic Mode on PS VR will improve – if your PS VR screen size is set to Small or Medium, the framerate of content viewed in Cinematic Mode goes up from 90Hz to 120Hz with this update.

PS VR will now support Blu-ray 3D* discs. You will have the ability to watch them in stereoscopic 3D via your headset.

Voice chat for Remote Play

We’re adding voice chat when using Remote Play on Windows PC, Mac or an Xperia device. If you’ve got a gaming session planned with your friends, but you’re away from your system, this update makes it seem like you’re right at home. You can switch your mic on and off via the microphone icon on the Tool Bar of the Remote Play app.

Off-console availability

We have a variety of off-console apps and features that make communication with other gamers easier, like the PlayStation App and PS Messages. We’re adding an icon, shaped like a smartphone, which indicates a player is logged into PSN but away from their console.

Custom wallpaper & profile colour

Ready for a much more personal PS4 home screen? Head to Settings, then select Theme. From here, choose ‘Custom’ and select any screenshot and set it as your new PS4 home screen wallpaper.

Also there’s a new option to better personalise your Profile page. If you’ve selected a custom cover image, your PS4 will generate a choice of supporting colours based on that image to change the page’s background colour to.

Share your activity

You’ll now have more choice on what you want to include on your Activity Feed, letting you create custom stories with text, screenshots, player and game tags. Find the post tool on What’s New, your Profile or Content Info Screen.

Activity feed privacy

In addition, you can now change the privacy settings for individual posts. You can alter who sees your Activities via the same-named tab in the Sharing Your Experience section of Settings, while you can decide the level of privacy for videos, screenshots, broadcasts, PS Store and PS Music when you go to upload them. But worry not, you can also alter who gets to see that content after the post has been shared.

Save Data Shortcut

Hover over a game title icon and press the Options button. You’ll be given the choice to ‘Upload/Download Saved Data’ from the the PS4’s home screen that let you upload the saved data on your PS4 to PS Plus online storage and download the saved data from PS Plus online storage to your PS4 with ease.

From Capture Gallery to SHAREfactory

Select your chosen screenshot or video in Capture Gallery, and by pressing the Options button you’ll have the choice to go straight into SHAREfactory and start editing.

GIF support

Get the GIF love in 4.50, as you can now share GIFs from SHAREfactory to your Activity Feeds.

Boost mode (applicable to PlayStation 4 Pro only)

PS4 Pro gets a new feature in this update called Boost Mode. This feature has been designed to provide better performance for legacy titles that have not been patched to take advantage of the PS4 Pro’s faster CPU and its faster and double-sized GPU. This can provide a noticeable frame rate boost to some games with variable frame rates, and can provide frame rate stability for games that are programmed to run at 30 Hz or 60 Hz.

Depending on the game, the increased CPU speed may also result in shorter load times. Keep in mind that Boost Mode is not guaranteed to work with all titles. Turning the setting off will allow the game to be played in a mode that replicates the standard PS4.

You can turn on the Boost Mode from the PS4’s Settings menu. Go to ‘Settings’, then ‘System’, then scroll down to ‘Boost Mode’ and tick the box to turn Boost Mode on.

PS Messages and Communities app updates

We’re also updating the PS Messages (for Android and iOS) and Communities apps (FOR Android and iOS) tomorrow with a few handy features.

When you receive a Party invitation from your friends on PS Messages, now you can respond with a quick reply, “I’ll join later” or “Sorry, I can’t join,” when you want to get back to them asap.

On the Communities app, you can now easily check the PSN service status under Settings > View Status of PSN Services.

Also on the Communities app, iOS users can tell at a glance if there are any new posts in their community by checking the badge app icon (the number in a red circle at the top-right corner of the app’s icon).

We can’t wait for you to get your hands on all these new features, and make sure to let us know what you think in the comments. We’re listening and always appreciate your feedback!

133 Comments

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Would love if they sorted it so official headsets don’t need to use up a USB port. Like to have my V2 pad wired. With that and the headset there’s no room for an external HDD. Can’t believe they didn’t design it with at least one in the back of the PS4.

Can I plug disk to another PS4 and play games there if I add my account there? Or if my PS4 got broken, and I buy a new one, could I just connect external disk back and have all games (so in fact it’s a kind of backup)?.

Some absolutely great features in this update. The external HDD is a smart move. I still secretly wish you would roll that out for PS3.

There is one glaring omission that I would strongly suggest you change stance on. 4K Blu-Ray playback. Not to offer 4K via the playstation store is bad enough but for those of us that have forked out for the PS4 Pro and a 4K HDR tv we would appreciate our prime machine having the ability to play these movies. I don’t know why you chose to defend the decision by saying Netflix, Amazon and Youtube offer 4K content. They barely scrape the barrell. I am having to use my 4K discs on my Xbox One S and to add to the Iron my favourite movie, Ghostbusters, is a Sony product. So a Sony Movie cannot be played on Sony created media on a Sony machine. Surely you guys realise how silly this decision was.

well first of all I have several smaller HDDs for historic reasons. secondly it’s easier to make backups when you can connect two. and thirdly…even wii u supports 2 external HDDs..so what’s sony’s excuse?

If external USB 3.0 HD is a fast SSD, will read and write performance be significantly better than for internal hdd? I heard that replacing internal hdd with SSD don’t significantly improve performance.

i was waiting VR rd bluray support as well since day 1…and have exactly the same question …if they are going to realease in an upcoming update ..3d support for media player ..since there are digital purchases of movies that we have allready and would be great to be able to watch

Boost mode has a definite impact, you won’t get a higher max fps in 30 fps limited games etc. but you will experience a much more stable game with a perfectly stable fps. This is proven in comparisons all over the net. Don’t listen to Ryusennin he’s a known microsoft fanboy.

Do you HAVE to let the PS4 format your external harddrive before it will work? I already have a correctly formatted 500 gb external drive split between PC and Playstation use, with about 200gb set to NTFS and about 300gb* set to FAT32, which i’ve been using for PC and PS3 back ups for a few years.

But i’ve also tested to see if my PS4 could use the FAT32 partition when the USB music feature came out and it worked.

If you have to let the PS4 format it, does it have to format the entire drive or can i set it only to reformat the FAT32 bit, or can i set it to create a third partition, leaving the PC and PS3 partitions alone?

Also if i have to reformat the whole thing, can the PS3 use the exFat format?

*Though of course OSs never let you use the complete amount of space on a drive or partition or display it in an odd way – the 300gb only shows up as being 270gb on my PS3, similarly to how my PS4 only lets me use/shows me 405gb of its’ 500gb.

Sony, could you give a bit more info on external HDD’s? Like, if it is one with a power source. What do we need to look out for? I know that that kind of HDD’s have sleep modes. Do we have to turn them off before branching them? Or do we have to do something else to prevent problems with being Idle or Rest Mode.

You can use either, I am using a 3.5 inch externally power drive as that what I had available.

It powers down when you go into rest mode unless you are downloading at the time then it remains powered up until your download finishes. It will also power up for any updates pushed through overnight.

I had an issue this leaving the ports powered for 3 hours in rest mode, doing this caused the USB drive to remain on constantly. Not sure if it’s been fixed as I have not had time to look and I simply turn that option off.

Is anybody else having screen flicker issues with the PS4 Pro? I’m hoping this patch fixes this issue. If I change the tv source to HDMI 4 for about a minute it’s seems to fix the flicker issue when I change the source back to HDMI 5 (vizio.. that’s the 4K port). Does anyone have their own fix for this issue?

Boost mode has a definite impact, you won’t get a higher max fps in 30 fps limited games etc. but you will experience a much more stable game with a perfectly stable fps. This is proven in comparisons all over the net. Don’t listen to Ryusennin he’s a known microsoft fanboy.

Boost mode has a definite impact, you won’t get a higher max fps in 30 fps limited games etc. but you will experience a much more stable game with a perfectly stable fps. This is proven in comparisons all over the net. Don’t listen to Ryusennin he’s a known microsoft fanboy.

Can’t believe it. Finally upgraded my hdd at the beginning of the year, obviously paying more for an internal drive, went through the whole bloody process of re-downloading everything and now you finally allow external drives. Aaaaargh.

Also noticed that they have qualified that not all USB drives may be compatible. I had an old Samsung M3 portable 1TB which worked fine as a PS4 backup disk and for PC work but was not recognised by the beta. Luckily I had another drive which worked perfectly.

PlayStation please make your mobile apps available in the middle east region. I can’t download the messages game from the Google play with Egyptian account! Please consider loyal fans and players are all over the world

From the article “Note: compatible HDDs need to be USB 3.0 or later, between 250GB (min) – 8TB (max).” and also note they say “There is no guarantee that all USB storage devices are compatible with your system”.

I have a 2TB drive installed in my PS4 but i still have the old drive that was taken out of it. I am wondering if after the update hits will i be able to hook up my old drive and transfer some stuff i still have on it over to the new drive that is currently installed in my PS4?

Sigh… I don’t want to ‘create custom stories’ in my custom feed -_-, I simply want more options as to what I’m seeing from others. For example, I don’t need an update on every trophy a friend makes!That might have remotely been the only thing I’d be interested in here.

Also, hide hidden trophies in the actual trophy list! This might not be an issue for the average player with a couple of hundred trophies, but at over 6000 trophies you don’t want more games to scroll in there than necessary.

What has also been really bugging me is having to scroll through a bunch of options in the quick menu just to get to the ‘quit the app’ option (which, by my account, should be the default selected option), so more customisable options as to how things are sorted.

Also, bring back microphone support for non-Sony headsets that are connected to the controller.

A bunch of simple requests that simply improve on the user experience.But hey, at least I can transform my custom feed into Miiverse now…...

Sigh… I don’t want to ‘create custom stories’ in my custom feed -_-, I simply want more options as to what I’m seeing from others. For example, I don’t need an update on every trophy a friend makes!That might have remotely been the only thing I’d be interested in here.

Also, hide hidden trophies in the actual trophy list! This might not be an issue for the average player with a couple of hundred trophies, but at over 6000 trophies you don’t want more games to scroll in there than necessary.

What has also been really bugging me is having to scroll through a bunch of options in the quick menu just to get to the ‘quit the app’ option (which, by my account, should be the default selected option), so more customisable options as to how things are sorted.

Also, bring back microphone support for non-Sony headsets that are connected to the controller.

A bunch of simple requests that simply improve on the user experience.But hey, at least I can transform my custom feed into Miiverse now…

I love remote play from mac\windows now that was a step in the right direction, all these new features are great but please add support so I can map keyboard buttons and use over remote play (besides just x/o) this would make remote play so great.

Some nice features here. Still not sure why PS4 still lacks PS1 support. Got about 30 or so PS1 games I’d quite like to redownload and have installed onto my PS4. And sure can’t be that PS4 isn’t powerful enough to do so. So what’s the deal?

Can we get some control for the PSVR movie screen size/distance? It’d be nice to push it back a bit so you don’t have to move your head quite so much when watching a film. I don’t usually sit right at the front when I go to the cinema.

ok, tried that, Big is massive and makes films low res, medium is just a bit uncomfortably close and small is horrible, it’s attached to your head movements.the Youtube VR screen is better, set medium to that position, or have it simply adjustable/FOV slider please